Bio

I'm a writer and performer in New York City. For the last three years I've been touring the country doing my one-woman shows "Bad Role Models and What I Learned from Them," "How to Survive Your Adult Relationship with Your Family" and my newest show "Becoming Ourselves: Why Is It So Damn Hard?"

These shows are a combination of humor, story-telling, autobiography and sociological observations.

One of the key things for me in doing these live shows is to embrace the oral tradition. And to embrace impermanence. In this age of everything going digital, I don't allow my shows to be recorded or video'd. So you won't find any of them on YouTube.

Before giving live shows, I was a professional freelance writer for over twenty-five years. My humor has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, Scene4 Magazine, Identity Theory, Exquisite Corpse, Art Design Cafe and Narrative Magazine and it's been anthologized, including in two of The New Yorker’s “best of” collections, “Fierce Pajamas” and “Disquiet, Please,” in Rosalind Warren's anthologies "Women's Glib" and "Women's Glibber" and in "Humor Me" edited by Ian Frazier.

I've also written lots of journalism about movies, music and food -- cooking is my hobby -- and here's an interview I did with Julia Child. (I loved spending time with her as you can tell from reading this.

"With One Eye Open," my humor collection, was published in 2010. Praise includes this from Elle columnist and life advisor, E. Jean Carroll, "Miss Polly Frost is so funny, so wildly intelligent, and so mean to the unfortunate half-wits who cross her path, she is the Edith Wharton of her generation." Gordon Hauptfleisch, in Blogcritics wrote, "Just as Benchley had a proclivity for presenting 'the commonplace as remarkable' – as James Thurber noted when he referenced his influence in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty – Frost, whether it’s carbohydrates, or conversation, or punctuation, also has the wit and wherewithal to take the quotidian and make it quotable, or put drollery into the doldrums." More praise for "With One Eye Open" is here.

“Deep Inside,” my collection of satirical erotic horror and sci fi stories, was published by Tor in 2007, and has been written about and reviewed over fifty times. It was praised by Ron Jeremy, and listed by Rachel Kramer Bussel as one of the ten best erotica books in Time Out New York. I wrote the stories in "Deep Inside" as monologues for actors to read. These stories were performed at Cornelia Street Cafe in NYC from 2003-2007.

I'm lucky to be married to Ray Sawhill. We co-wrote, directed and produced “Sex Scenes,” a theater project which was a popular regular event at Cornelia Street Cafe. A recording of “Sex Scenes” is available as a download and CD at http://rapturehouse.com. Together with the film director, Matt Lambert, Ray and I co-created the sci fi burlesque webseries “The Fold.”